David Frum discusses the UN resolution regarding Iraq and observes that President Bush's diplomacy follows a predictable pattern:

Step 1: Bush threatens to go it alone.
Step 2: Liberals and foreign allies holler.
Step 3: Threatened with irrelevance, Congress/the UN/the Arab League/the IMF offers to do 80% of what Bush wants.
Step 4: Bush reluctantly agrees to work with Congress/the UN/the Arab League/the IMF.
Step 5: Admiring articles about Colin Powell appear in the New York Times.
Step 6: Conservatives panic.
Step 7: Bush does precisely what he intended to do from the very beginning.

The United Nations may be the world's most hypocritical, wasteful, vexatious, and absurd organization. But there's no getting around the fact that a favorable Security Council resolution is a very useful thing to have.